Naturally
by Ange et Demon
Summary: "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." - Lao Tzu Yes, because everything always went so naturally in HER life, ha! AU! Fuu!SI ...Or in which life's changes don't go so naturally and she decides not to just go with it.
_"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."_

 _― Lao Tzu_

* * *

 _Water rushes, the sounds of terrified screams erupting in-between the waves of salt and sand, a blurred twilight of sound and color, in which none could escape. Burning erupted from inside the chest; hands flailing in desperation, and gasps of salty death replaced beloved air, making the dots so much more prominent. Hands touched her, desperate to grab her out, despite the nets holding her into the sea, her legs caught under her._

 _The darkness and light fell to one, the burning ended when her mouth opened again for a breath, only it didn't hurt, nor reject the watery death assigned to her, instead there was a blissful moment of absolute nothingness, no end and no beginning. Dark strands of curls drifted around her, her body not sinking or floating, with pale arms simply floating around her, her struggles no more. No sounds or colors, just the ocean surrounding all directions, and she looked out among the clear blue above her, to see the shining face of the life-giving sun._

 _The light blossomed into something more, clouds of yellow softly swarmed, tired bones turned light into a drifting of a perpetual twilight, like nothing would ever made sense, like this purgatory was all that was left of the world around her and she wanted- needed more, needed more than this last piece of confused, erratic peace in a shining, yellow-white world around her. Was she still in the water or...?_

 _Looking above the floating, the light had faded, instead morphed into a young woman around her age, if not younger. She was strange with chin length mint green hair, orange eyes filled with a solemn happiness, and a paleness of the skin streaked with gore and blood where a warm shade of tan should have been, in deep comparison to the blue-tint and slight bloating of the drowned female, and they stared at each numbly, both taken too soon from life._

 _They stared at each other, like two mirrors with an image bouncing to and fro, and the orange-eyed girl smiled solemnly, while her blue-eyed companion delivered a quiet, numb tug of the lips, neither in the mood for anything more than this small exchange after their individual traumatic experience in the art of death._

 _"You want to be my friend, ssu?"_

 _Blue slowly reached her hand out, meeting Orange halfway, her eyes shut with her small, yet happy smile, while Orange did the same, grinning with her eyes wide open._

 _"Sure."_

 _Then there, was nothing; absolutely nothing._

* * *

Her name is Fuu, and she's pretty with long mint green hair that curls at the end only when it is long, and its thick when not cut, and she isn't really this girl that she is now. She looks at herself, and sees the same four year old girl that should be staring back at her, except something's unnatural about her face when she stares long enough, and it makes her angry because something's wrong with her eyes, and she knows it.

"My eyes aren't supposed to be blue," She mentions offhandedly one day to her mother, whose young and pretty too, with green hair and brown eyes, and her mother pushes a piece of her slightly curled hair behind her ear, and smiles down at her with her pale pink lips, and Fuu can't help her thoughts wondering on to if her mother was even supposed to be alive right about now, but she can't say that. Her mother is alive, and she isn't sure why she even thinks of something so horrible, just like she can't fathom why she just _knows_ her eyes shouldn't be this shade of blue.

Her kind mother smiles weakly. "I'm sure one of our relative's eyes was blue. Why shouldn't yours be?" She asks, but Fuu can find no respond adequate enough to answer, so she shrugs, but deep down she knows her eyes shouldn't be blue, and she imagines them as orange, and it fits them so well, and if only they were the right color...

"They're supposed to be orange." Fuu says, softly, but she pauses, and then shakes her head. "No, I like them better as blue. They remind me of someone else...I think." She added, twirling a piece of her hair around her finger softly, and even the curls remind her of someone else, someone with blue eyes and softly curled, long dark hair and she can't figure out who she is reminded of, but it is someone she knows. How could she know about this girl if she's never been outside of this house except for the woods, but no one is ever in the woods except for her mother and herself because they live on the outskirts of Takigakure?

Her mother looks so tired, so very tired at her words, but she keeps composed, like she is unbothered by the strangeness of her little daughter, and Fuu honestly feels bad for making her so stressed, and she wants to say sorry, and act better, but she isn't sure how else to act, so she put her arms behind her back and looks down at the wooden floor of their small house in a burning embarrassment.

She feels her mother touch her face softly, running a hand across the flesh under her eyes, and looks at her directly in the eye for a few moments, like she's gazing into the eyes of Buddha. It takes her twelve seconds to stop staring with those inquisitive eyes that stare into her, and Fuu knows this because she counts awkwardly in her head the entire time.

"Well," Her mama says finally, releasing her face, with all the seriousness in the world at that exact moment. "I suppose you would look very, very beautiful with orange eyes." She hums ponderously, rubbing her chin. "I think I still prefer you with that lovely, lovely shade of blue, unique in its own way, just like you." Her mother determined with a giant grin, that Fuu returned instantly.

"I love them because you do! I love you too, ssu!"

Her mother broke down into sobs at her words, "I'm so sorry. Fuu, please, remember no matter what happens, I love you sweetheart." She clutched onto her, and the little girl took the initiative and held her crying mother in her small arms, though she didn't understand- not then anyway- why her mother was so very sorry.

There was just a terrible twisting in her stomach that meant something was wrong.

* * *

Fuu grows up lonely, and she only has had only one person she can depend upon in all her four and a half years; her mama. Strangers come and go, such as village elders and a boy named Shibuki who is much, much older than her by almost eight years, and he talks to her while his father and her mother talk privately. Most of the time, her mama comes back out of those meeting in fits of tears, and angered yells, cursing those shinobi on the council and Fuu's father (who she has never even seen), and she rages for an hour, then apologizes to Fuu for something she can't even speak of yet.

Fuu looks in her mirror and sees the face of someone else, and it makes her cry sometimes, because in that mirror she sees a woman as old as her mother, light blue eyes and long, curled dark hair. She's pretty, but it's not her, and she knows it's not because that young woman isn't Fuu, but she also knows her and she gets so angry at her curls that she demands her mother cut them all off, because she wants them gone and when her mother hesitates, she yanks the scissors away and starts shearing it off herself, not even mindful on not cutting her fingers or keeping it even and she starts screaming at that evil woman to go away.

"MY NAME's FUU, SSU!" She cries as her screaming mother tears the scissors from her palms, begging her to stop, pleading and wailing at her to try and calm down, and she knows it hurts her mother so very much, and she doesn't want to, but she isn't the same girl as the one in the mirror and she needs her hair short, and it takes her an hour to calm down and before that they fall into each other's arms to let their griefs flow out. Her mama has to fix her hair, and by the time it's done, it barely reaches her chin and her curls are gone.

"Why?" Mama muttered, breathless, the remains of green hair floating towards the wooden floor, and she looks like a ghost a she slumped onto her knees with her daughter. "Your hair..." She was so lifeless, so dull. It was like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders, and she wasn't even upset like when the elders came; although she did have similar paleness, the death-like motions was different that curses.

"It wasn't me. I'm sorry. You liked my hair. I'm sorry. Don't be angry, ssu." Fuu pleaded, trying to find a reason that made sense, except nothing did. She had blue eyes and her skin was paler than it should be, and those curls weren't hers, and she couldn't find adequate words for why she cut the tips of her fingers in a desperate attempt for the scary women in the mirror to go away, and it hurts to try and make it make sense to her. Her mother frowns deeply, holding her close, rocking both of them, the scissors falling to the floor from her hand with the locks that had been shed and the tired woman was speaking under her breath to calm herself, and then she looked at Fuu with a tired beam, the dim light fading into a lucid stare. She grabbed her daughter's face, turning it softly in her hand with those playfully serious eyes, if only to comfort her daughter in the way that's always worked and Fuu smiled weakly, if just to hide her own hidden anxieties and fears over what she had just done.

"Well," Her mama says finally, releasing her face, with all the seriousness in the world at that exact moment, just like before when she had issues with her eyes." I suppose you looked very, very beautiful with long hair and curled hair." She hums ponderously, rubbing her chin like she did whenever Fuu had issues with her body. "I think I prefer you with that short hair, it makes you even more unique." Her mother finished with a giant grin, which Fuu returned instantly.

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

This is the first time that her mama didn't cry when saying those words, and Fuu can't help but feel like the woman finally just gave up. That's scary than not knowing who you were.

* * *

Mukade had never had a family - no, she had, only once when she was with her friends, but never had she ever had one that was hers and not that of pretending to feel loved with comrades, which wasn't a surprise because she had grown up in the Third Shinobi War, and no one was spared when two feuding villages came to fight near them. Since childhood, her dreams had always been different than her reality, no more kunai and soft happiness in the form of family, and she always wished for a better version of her life with her family, children with parents and good fortunes, because that was all she had never grown up with- she can't help but wonder bitterly why she had been so foolish as to believe in such a dream.

Takigakure was small, almost medium sized if compared to the larger and the smaller villages, but they were also formidable for having trained the most jonin in a short amount of time, because despite the village's size, their strength was nothing to scoff at, and it was in that Mukade met her match in the form of a young man named Kemushi Takayama, the top jonin in the profession of Fūinjutsu, and a handsome young man from outside the village who came in when his parents fled from their former home of Uzushio. His hair was red, his eyes were orange, and he had won her heart with no competition in sight, and they wed before she even told her friends about it, two happy shinobi in love in a heartless world. Needless to say, the woman was more than pleased, this love match leaving her and her children with the right to such a name, and her husband acted as if she had been with him forever, and Mukade never looked back at the world of the shinobi she had left behind for her family. She took what little money she had alongside with Kemushi's money from his missions, and they bought a house together on the outskirt of the village where they would live peacefully, and their peace was never disturbed for the first two years. He went off on missions, and she remained home, and that was how life went until she fell pregnant, and they were both ecstatic.

Mukade has many regrets, yet her biggest was when she married her supposed hero, whom was a shinobi with more rank than she, and he signed off on allowing them to seal a monster into her first and only little girl, because of her blood and compatibility to the beast- there had never been a documented jinchūriki, and how they know her Fuu would be able to hold it. The strength of the village is what got them the monster, the Chōmei. He gave up during their fights, leaving them because he had assumed she would abandon their infant because having a child like that would be burden. Mukade couldn't bring herself to do it to a helpless infant, so she did want any mother would do, demanded time for her to raise Fuu before such a burden such as a demon. He left, their divorce finalized before Fuu's birth, leaving both of them poor and nameless, with no one willing to claim either of them as their own.

Though, she always assumed her marriage was her biggest regret, it may be second at this moment, in which she sits outside the sealing room, one specially defined out of bark from the tree that houses the Hero's Water, her child inside screaming her head off, and the mother can do nothing to numb the pain. Her hands grip the wood of the chair she collapsed in with an iron grip, the arm rests cracking under her fingers with small indents. It had been easy enough to cast a Genjutsu onto Fuu, then take her to the secret position where it was decided they would meet. However, with all that chakra being poured into her body with a flimsy seal, the Genjutsu broke, and Fuu was awake enough to feel it all and wail enough to break her heart.

"Mukade," Her old sensei and leader, Lord Hisen, rubs her arm slowly, and she turns to him, trying to ignore the cries of her daughter. "You do not have to stay; we will tend to her, if you cannot bear to stay for your goodbyes." He looked down at her with a weary look, his stress wrinkles more prominent, and the grey of his hair more defined at such a horrific time. Mukade released the grip she had, rubbing the imaginary dirt off her apron and the edge of her blouse sleeves, staring at the ground, and then moves her eyes back to him with a weary smile.

"No, no." She whispered. "I'm a kunoichi, you know. I can handle this."

 _She couldn't._

Hisen's gentle grip didn't loosen, and he nodded in agreeance with her statement, "You are a kunoichi, but you are also a mother. If my son was in pain-" He stops mid-sentence, looking at her tears that slid down her face silently. "I would want to end the burden too; I would do what I must to protect him, just as you wish to do with that little girl, young Fuu."

"I'm her mother!" Mukade choked silently on her own sobs. "I should be in there, or at least be able to handle the situation more than this than to just give her up to the village, Hisen-san; I should be able to do more than sit here and listen to her. She's in pain." She insisted, clutching onto him like a life line. The man was genuinely fond of the mother and daughter duo, having known Mukade since he was her squad leader when she was genin.

Hisen nodded solemnly. "I will take care of her, the burden she will face, not only with the beast, but in the village will be great, and I understand your choice for leaving Fuu as the village's ward." He spoke dutifully, releasing her arm so she may have her grief.

Mukade had never wanted to be that kind of mother, had always wanted to have that dream family and raise her children, and not leave them alone and orphaned like she had been as a little girl, but Fuu was strange and unnerving already. Her outbursts were endearing, because she had so much spirit, but now with the Chōmei being sealed inside of her, she knew she couldn't handle such a situation, not alone when she was still only a Tokubetsu Jōnin, whose specialty was Genjutsu of all things. She couldn't protect her from the villagers when they would attack her with their cruel words, or defend against anyone who wished to hurt Fuu from outside the village if they were too strong, or even be able to fix the seal if it loosened. The mother's emotions also clouded her judgement whenever something upset Fuu, and crying never would help. Her abilities wouldn't be in her child's best interest, and Hisen would be able to keep Fuu safe, and Mukade knew her choice was clear.

She gave up. Fuu was better off without her. So she stood up and left the facility, leaving behind a screaming four years whose cries were trapped behind large wooden doors.

 _Fuu was alone._

* * *

 **This was originally going to be written based on another story by an author, but I changed my mind after some consideration of my writing abilities, and this was the product of such thoughtful writes and rewrites. This was written with high, high inspiration from Sonyat's own story,** _A_ _nemone_ **which involved Shizune instead. If you haven't read her stories you very well should because she is an excellent writer, and I am a dedicated reader. I highly recommend reading her work.**

 **Edit: To all my new readers, I would like to inform you, personally, of a new predator I have recently found out about, so let's have a peek shall we on this new turn of events. I'm new-ish to the writing on here, so I usually tended to just read and keep my writing simple. It seems this method worked. I wrote this, with all credit and permission from Sonyat, only to get a hateful message from an author named Seishun Kyoukoukyou who thought it would be amusing to accuse me of plagiarizing. Now, I'm not a troublemaker, and I worried I may have written something to similar to their own writing. So I deleted this story. Well, I was now informed that:**

 **A) This person has plagiarized two people.**

 **B) They have no stories on their accounts, nor multiple accounts.**

 **C) They are all around nasty, hateful people.**

 **If anyone has a problem, I would appreciate a very, noon-hateful message and we can settle it calmly. I'm sorry to have to call this person out, except I've had enough of feeling bad of something I did nothing of and will never do.**


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